


come home with me

by brandflakeeee



Series: wait for me [1]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 05:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18866992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brandflakeeee/pseuds/brandflakeeee
Summary: hades tries, and so does she.





	come home with me

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i've become enamored with this musical and it's characters, and greek myth has always had a special place in my heart. i'm weak for persephone and hades so here's this little thing. i might continue it, i might not. unbeta'd so any mistakes are mine. please enjoy!

The last wave of summer rains had turned the ground to mud, puddles gathered where the ground had sagged or someone had left a footprint. The air was filled with the smell of petrichor but the haze of the afternoon sun was fighting it’s way through the wall of grey clouds above. Patches of light scattered across the ground here or there and from a certain angle it appeared the earth itself was cracking apart. The birds had fallen more and more silent in the past few weeks, their gatherings drifting further south to find warmer weather as the chill of autumn began to slowly creep across the countryside. There was a crispness to the air that hadn’t been there the day before. Harvests would be coming in by the basketful; farmers had been saying for weeks how much brighter the crops had looked this year. 

 

A small change, brought on by a small flicker of hope.

 

A shrill whistle cut across the fields, the train tracks that only ever serviced one train rumbling as the engine came along dragging it’s usual cars. Beautiful. Shining. Gleaming. Always the same, though not always at the same time. The station it pulled up to was almost always devoid of life, empty as a ghost. Seemingly abandoned. 

 

When the train pulled up and the great engine let out a burst of steam the platform was decidedly  _ not _ empty.

 

Persephone stood rooted to the floor, her favored green dress catching the wind from the train as it stopped and hissed a great billow of heat. Her hair was unruly, wild, unbound except the vibrant asphodel tucked behind her ear. All golden skinned and sun-kissed with the powdered pollen still clinging to her as if it longed to not let her go.

 

_ But I have to go, way back down _ .

 

In the past many years she’d refused to be on the platform on time. Refused to wait on him to make up his mind if he was coming in August or September. Drawing out the last of the summer warmth before she would be swallowed up into the cold hands of the ground for another half a year. Another miserable six months. It was hard to remember a time when she hadn’t been so miserable, but the memories are there if she looks hard enough. Back to the beginning and the first several decades when their love had been new, fresh, untouchable. As vibrant as a garden in the peak of summer that kept Persephone warm even in those months below ground. She’d been happy. They’d been happy. 

 

Sometimes she wonders if it would be easier if she’d eaten twelve seeds, not six. When Zeus and her mother had been closing in with tempers of ire and she’d never felt so loved than in that bed, his hands against her skin and his kisses feathered with whispered promises. A band of gold forged from his own hands freshly made and adorning her hand. A promise. A vow. How desperate she’d been then to stay, to find any loophole to her overbearing mother. 

 

Sometimes she can still taste the sweet burst of the pomegranate on her tongue. 

 

Despite the rumors that run amok in the above ground, Persephone had gone with her lover into the depths of the earth oh so willingly, happy and in love.

 

How that love had soured, untended to. Weeds had grown in the garden they’d sown. Thick, awful things that twisted around everything they could get their vines on and choking the life right out of them. Whispered promises became screaming words and oh, how the world above ground could feel their fighting. Still do. It isn’t fair to the mortals who rely on her and the others in her dysfunctional family to provide, to help, to heal. 

 

It hadn’t been fair to the two young lovers, either.

 

Her heart aches when she thinks of Orpheus, of Eurydice. How fiercely she’d been reminded of herself and her own lover all those years ago. She wonders if he would have looked back, had Persephone and her husband been the ones to make the walk. Would he have let the doubt creep in? She doesn’t want to know the answer, worried it might make her want a drink more than she already does. 

 

But Orpheus and Eurydice had been given a fair chance, even if the circumstances had been partially her fault. Her lover had no business dragging poor mortals into their vicious fighting, but perhaps they had both needed the stark reminder of what it was once like. Of what the world had been and what it could be again. Still, she mourns for them. Hades had taken to calling his souls his ‘children’, but they aren’t  _ her _ children. She thinks Orpheus and Eurydice could be, though. The closest she thinks she’ll ever come to encouraging life beyond her flowers, her gardens.

 

For all she is of a goddess of growth and fertility, Persephone has never had children of her own. She’d longed for them, oh she’d longed. He had too, in the beginning. They’d never brought any to life, but they’d lost three instead. Life cannot exist without death, but death cannot create life. She thinks each loss had been a fracture, a wedge driven between them. Both blaming themselves. 

 

She tries not to think about it anymore. 

 

Her attention goes back to the train parked at the station and the figure that steps off.

 

“Ticket?”

 

“ _ Can _ it, you.” Persephone’s smile worms it’s way onto her face, nudging Hermes sharply in the side as he approaches and she breezes by. “Make yourself useful, brother, and grab the bags.”

 

“Lot lighter than you usually do.” He remarks and she casts a look over her shoulder. “You forgettin’ somethin?”

 

“Ain’t no liquor in there if that’s what you’re after. Just sunshine and the last summer stars.” 

 

Damned if she doesn’t want a drink, though. Her Ma had even begged her at one point, she recalls vaguely when Persephone had gone three days without it. Poured the lot of it into the dirt in her Ma’s garden and watched it water the earth. She feels parched without it. Flowers thrive on water just fine, so she will too. 

 

Because she’s  _ tryin’.  _

 

But damn if it isn’t the hardest thing she’s ever had to do.

 

Every garden needed tending. Weeds pulled. Plants nurtured. Watered. And she was weeding out the vines root by root.

 

The cool air of the train car hits her face as she hops on, it’s interior familiar and dim. Hermes scuttles behind her with her bags and stows them away as she proceeds toward the back of the car, to her usual spot where she can watch the horizon until it disappears into caves and tunnels. She nearly trips over her husband as he stands abruptly from the shadows, all dark glasses and suit and radiating the heat she associates with him. The heat that hums and power that coils around her bones. Amber eyes widen briefly before she can hide the expression of surprise and he notices, judging by the way his lips twitch at the corners.

 

“You waited for me.”

 

“Told you I would.” His voice is low, the usual grumble as he reaches up to peel away the glasses and tuck them into his front pocket. He hasn’t changed (and neither has she) but there’s something different in the air about him. About them. She can feel it. It’s alluring, intoxicating, and suddenly she wants more of it. Wants to know what’s caused it. 

 

_ Wait for me? _

 

_ I will. _

 

The walls between them can’t be crumbled by one gesture, by one day of kindness. But it’s a damned good start. They’re an oxymoron together, an oxymoron of life and death swirled into one realm that knows no ends. Death cannot exist without life, and life cannot thrive without death. It’s an eternal dance, one that they’ve been embroiled in from the start. From the moment he’d taken her in his arms in the dirt, bound her life to him with a band of gold. Both life and death have withered and suffered and thrashed to be free in the past decades, the balance unhinged. A balance that needs repaired, but apologies are not enough. Will never be enough. They’ve both been foolish, jealous, and cruel to each other. Persephone with her drink. He with his walls, his foundries. Where once her vibrant growth would worm between the cracks in the walls, into abandoned corners of the factories and imbibe them with life, she finds those growths cut off. Cold. Alone. 

 

The train lurches beneath them and yet neither move, a stand-off until she grows tired of standing there like a fool and sits on the plush seat that envelopes her. He takes a second before sitting across from her.

 

It takes three minutes and twenty six seconds before the silence drives her into madness.

 

“You take care of the girl?” She asks suddenly. Hades doesn’t look surprised she’s asked. His brows furrow briefly, the only change in his stoic expression. Her husband, ever the statue of rock and steel. 

 

“She’s fine.” A pause. “The boy?”

 

“He’s fine.” And she knows Eurydice and Orpheus are anything but fine, but they’ll manage. They have to. If Persephone has a letter folded up in her bag from a heart broken poet to his dead lover, she isn’t going to admit it at all. Not one damned bit. 

 

“Why did you come up with the train?” She asks, because she wants to know. Wants to hear him say it. He hasn’t come up to collect her in person in a very long time - unless it’s early. That way she has no choice but to go with him. 

 

“I missed ya.” He murmurs, and something sparks behind those eyes that Persephone recognises, if only for a moment. Her lips quirk at the corners. It’s like sharing a secret joke. Suddenly the silence seems less tense, less fitful. 

 

Their hands rest together, laced together, and the king and queen of the underworld watch as the above ground fades away in favor of dark tunnels. The silence lasts, but she finds it less suffering. The noise from the train fills it, and the quiet turning of pages from the book Hades is reading. She glances over and is surprised to see it isn’t a ledger, his usual fare. Always work. This is something else but she doesn’t recognize it and she doesn’t want to press her nose into it to find out. She doesn’t want to shatter the tentative peace that’s settled in for their journey.

 

This is the first time they’ve held hands in a very long time. Her lover, he isn’t much for public displays of affection except when the mood strikes. But the train is empty and Persephone can’t remember the last time he took her hand without it feeling like being clapped in irons.

 

The train lets loose a low whistle, slowing as it comes into the final stop. He offers his arm and she takes it without thinking. Hermes only watches as he leans in the doorframe of the narrow path to the engine car. 

 

“Gonna make yourself useful, brother?” Persephone grins at him, and Hermes tilts his hat with a wicked grin in return. 

 

“See ya soon, sister.”

 

She steps off the train and onto the platform and is startled by what she finds.

 

The air is not as thick with smoke and steam, and she cannot hear the miners toiling away or the builders forever bricking that damned wall. It’s hot, but not nearly as hot as some of those summer days up on top. It’s dimmer. The neons have faded. The Hadestown spread before her is not the Hadestown she left. It almost looks like a functioning city again, like the one she remembers on her very first trip down below. Before Hades had gotten it into his mind that she wanted foundries and mines and gems and steel and the stifling hellscape he had created in her last absence. 

 

“I listened.” He says, when she looks over at him. Or up, rather. He’s always been taller than her. Her arm is still looped through his. 

 

“To what?”

 

“The song. The music. My demanding wife.” His brow arches elegantly. “It isn’t finished.”

 

“And when will it be?”

 

“When you give the order. Building for you didn’t work. This underworld is much yours as it is mine. Deserves to be built together.”

 

It’s the nicest thing she’s heard from him in years, words without venom and hate and spite. Words with meaning, not thrown in a heat of the moment argument or when her mouth is slanted against his in a half drunken need. It’s all she’s ever wanted. She wants to feel at home here in Hadestown. In truth it isn’t so much the city and it’s industrialization, but him. Her home has always been him. 

 

The souls in Hadestown seem changed, too. They aren’t as listless. Pockets of them gather to smoke, drink, play games though they still wear the uniforms that seem permanently glued to their skin. Hades lets her take it all in on her own, processing this . . . . offering. This gift. A softer Hadestown, the best he can give without relying on her to bring more colour back into the dreary grey realm. This is the underworld she knows. The one of dirt and mud and soil and rivers, not of mines and foundries. There are factories still, she can feel them rumbling the earth, but the pillars of smoke have been moved so far off to the distance that she can hardly see them in the great cavernous place. 

 

She knows how Hades had turned to the industry to rely upon, when they had grown cold to one another. To depend on his work because he feared depending on his wife. They’re both bitter fools.

 

If the underworld has truly been brought back to life (so to speak), she feels her heart quicken in pace. She can see the soft glow beyond the city, and she  _ runs _ . Runs free and hard and her feet pound the ground, hair blowing behind her. A streak of colour against the gray. She passes souls who follow her with their gaze, but dare not speak or disturb whatever suddenly has their lady in such a tizzy. 

 

The moment she comes to the edge of the field, she kicks her muddied shoes away and dashes barefoot into the grass.

 

The Elysian fields had been her favorite thing about the pit of hell, the one shred of beauty and greenery as close as she could get it. The grass is soft, the trees are large and cast long shadows across the ground. There is sun but it is not quite sun - not properly. An illusion of just. Still, it warms her to the core and she turns her face toward it like a flower bending to the rays of the sun. This is his gift to her. This is him trying. And the bitter taste in Persephone’s mouth tells her she should apologise, do something. This gesture of good will and effort is beyond what she thought capable of her tall, dark, handsome man. 

 

“Dance with me.”

 

He’s caught up to her, she can feel it. His presence singing to the rushing blood in her veins.  _ This is for you. _

 

“What?”

 

“You heard me, lover.” She muses, and reaches out a hand. “Dance with me.”

 

He’s hesitant. Wary. She knows he can dance. She’s seen it.

 

“No one’s here but you an’ me. Our secret.”

 

For all his iron willpower and rage, Hades cannot bring himself to refuse her this. He takes the hand she offers and suddenly her world is filled with him. His heavy scent, his presence (which he says is cold but he always feels so  _ warm _ ) to her. He takes her in his arms and it is both a strange and familiar feeling that Persephone wants to cry. His fingers find hers, find her waist. They sway to music only they can hear - until she hums softly a tune that has those dark and brooding eyes softening at her. 

 

This is a peek at the Hades she fell so madly for. The Hades she loves. The big softie she married, the side of him she only gets to see. Reserved for her. And she hasn’t seen this side in ages. It’s just a flicker in that gaze, gone in an instant, but it’s still there like a dim candle flame. A flame Persephone intends to shelter and stoke for as long as possible. Her lilting tune follows with made up syllables that remind them both of a poet with a guitar and the woman he went to hell and back for. The man before her is the man who approached her in her mother’s garden, hesitant and sweet. The world around them is no longer painted in rust and yet the load he carries is still there. On his shoulders. Heavy and abhorrent.

 

He built the walls to keep her in. He destroyed them to let her in. The remains are beyond the fields, she can just see them if she squints. Ruins. So afraid to lose her he’d only driven her further away.

 

She, so afraid to lose him, had let the wedge cut deeper. 

 

“What has become of the heart of that man, now that he has everything?” It’s the only lyrics to the soft tune she gives, honey eyes meeting his again. There it is again, that flicker, and she feels her stomach flutter. Her heart give an extra leap. The hand at her waist comes up to cup her cheek, thumb brushing across her skin. Still, they sway together. 

 

“He’s given to a country girl to keep, against his better judgement.”

 

“His judgement ain’t always the best, I do agree.”

 

That manages to work an actual grin out of him.

 

“A troublesome country girl who stole him away just because she knew she could get away with it.”

 

“And she did, didn’t she?”

 

His gives a soft noise of a hum in acknowledgement. Then picks up humming the tune where she’d left off, spinning her slowly and drawing her back in. 

 

If the workers who pass by the fields notice their lord and lady dancing to music unheard, they say nothing within earshot. They cram into their lady’s speakeasy half an hour later to report how it looks like the winter might be mild this year.

 

“I’m sorry.” She says suddenly. She doesn’t know why. She knows it won’t help. He humming stops and the pair still. She continues before her mind can catch up to her loud damned mouth. “I’ve been nothin’ but a witch and a half.”

 

He arches a brow. 

 

Things won’t be okay between them, not for a while. But they’re healing. Weeding the garden of their love to remove the thick vines that threaten to strangle them. Planting new flowers to bloom in the sun.

 

She doesn’t know who moves first, but when he kisses her it feels like waking up after a frost. Like coming home after a very long time away. She can taste the nectar of her own lips and the rust of his as his other hand comes up to cup her face. It’s certainly not the most fiery kiss he’s ever given her but it is filled with things words cannot be put to. The raw power behind it almost makes her knees buckle. But Persephone ain’t a weak girl to swoon at a man. Her fingers tangle in the lapels of his vest to steady herself and damned if he doesn’t notice, grinning against her mouth. His fingers are fire against her cheeks, in her hair, soft. Giving her an option to pull away if she wants and she definitely does  _ not _ . 

 

She’s missed this. Missed him. 

 

She hums the soft melody on the walk all the way to the manor on the hill that overlooks Hadestown, her arm looped through his. The three hounds meet them at the door and everything is puppy kisses and cuddles and Persephone  _ laughs _ . Hades reaches down to scratch one behind the ear and she buries her face into another’s fur murmuring of how she’s missed them. 

 

When she looks up their gazes meet, and that softness around the edges of his eyes return. 

 

No, the wall between them won’t be demolished in a day. But they have all of autumn to figure that out. Six months to begin their dance together anew, and for eternity beyond that. For the first time in a while, the thought makes her heart stir.

 

Persephone smiles.


End file.
